I play a variety of ways. I do have a toon that I play with one other and we each use a hireling. It's just the way this duo wants to play the game. In fact one could think it's a way for us to learn the dungeons at our own speed and when we do group with others we won't do the stupidest things ever.
I am a fan of dungeon scaling and hirelings, because it allows this duo to play much further into the game and had some very balanced encounters doing so. So imo if you may not like this direction Turbine has gone, there are some of us that appreciate it.
The one simple thing I would do with hirelings to make them just that much better is make sure STAY works (Bar Choice #1) in any mode (Bar Choices #3-5) and when you do a "Move to Location" (Bar choice #2), change that to a true teleport. Don't let them think about "can I run to my master?", no just immediately teleport them. This gets rid of their biggest flaw and that is not being able to handle obsticales and traps correctly. Click hold, I go through a lava pit or past a trap. Click Teleport, done and continue on. Please! This would be a huge deal for me to see this in upcoming patch notes.
I will report this in game today:
There are some hotkey bugs with (Bar Choices 5 and 6), Passive mode and Interact. I cannot get the hotkeys to work and they only work on clicking. (Can another player out there confirm?) I have also tried other hotkeys then the Shift5 and Shift6 default with no luck. This is a huge issue for me. Why?
To give orders for spells/skills Bar Choices #7-0, the only way to have them work consistently and quickly is to make sure the Hireling is in Passive mode Shift5, but the hot key doesn't work for Passive. So lets say I want to use Power Shift9 quickly, I really have to do the following, Shift5-Shift9-Shift4. That puts him in Passive, fires the power and then puts him back in defend mode. Now Shift5 isn't working so it's really Click Power 5, Shift9-Shift4. I lose a ton of time on my character that way in a big fight.
Now preferably I would like it when I choose Shift9, no matter what mode they are in they acknowledge that asap and carry it out. The thing is the rarely do. So it's a series of steps and then you find out Shift5 and Shift6 powers can't be hot keyed. If Shift9 was dependable, I could pull off a quick Shift9 and keep controlling my on toon without a lot of lost opportunity.
So the better way is to have the command I give become top order, otherwise I need the hot keys fixed for Passive and Interact.
Better weapons and configurable powers would be great, but I find the above two issues more like bugs that should be cleaned up and more important then even weapons and configurable spells.
Again thanks for the Hireling option, I know a lot of people in online games hate them, but I've used them in all games that have offered them to some extent and it can extend the life of the game for me.